1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in the infeed and discharge receiver for high speed vision system sorting apparatus used to sort fragile articles such as potato chips. More particularly, this invention relates to infeed and receiving chute members having a variable slope and set in a predetermined position to catch and adequately control deceleration of the fragile articles and to prevent undue breakage of the fragile articles.
2. Background and Prior Art
In the production of potato chips on an industrial scale, it is known to utilize a vision inspection system to inspect potato chips visually and then reject those which are not up to visual standards. Typical rejection mechanisms utilize a line of air nozzles operated in accordance with processed signals indicating whether the chips should be rejected or not. The chips travel on a a high speed inspection conveyor during the inspection. Such a machine is sold under the trademark OPTI-SORT manufactured by Simco-Ramic. A patent illustrating one such optical inspection system is U.S. Pat. No. 4,581,632.
In adapting the Simco-Ramic OPTI-SORT machine to potato chips the chips travel in a monolayer on a rapidly moving inspection conveyor. The inspection conveyor is traveling at such a relatively high rate of speed that all chips are thrown from the end of the conveyor and follow a known trajectory. Air from an air reject module is used to reject chips by blowing them out of the trajectory that acceptable chips follow. In the Simco-Ramic approach the acceptable chips then land on another conveyor which decelerates the speed of the chips to a more appropriate speed for further processing.
Another known means of catching and decelerating acceptable chips in a similar type environment utilizing an optical inspection device is with a rigid flat bottom chute positioned in the path of acceptable chips. However, in practice it was found that the use of an ordinary flat bottom chute can contribute to product breakage. Furthermore, it does not decelerate the product effectively.
The use of the known deceleration conveyor also causes breakage since the chips hit the belt at an angle while traveling at a high rate of speed. Moreover, the flat belt conveyor used as a landing area for the non-defective product requires energy to operate; requires maintenance; and contributes to excessive length of the inspection station equipment and excessive use of floor space.
Accordingly, there is need in the art for an effective means of receiving acceptable chips from an optical sorting machine which does not cause undue breakage; does not take excessive floor space; and which provides for control of deceleration.